The moving of physically challenged persons in public institutions such as hospitals and health care facilities, and also in public buildings such as airport terminals and the like, almost always involves the use of a wheelchair. A great variety of wheelchairs are known, some of which are foldable to reduce storage space, some of which are designed for hand operation by the challenged person, and some of which are motorized and so on.
All of these wheelchairs have their application for a particular purpose. However, the moving of physically challenged persons from place to place in a health care facility or a large public building presents a somewhat different set of problems. In the first place, the distances to be travelled may be considerable, and the challenged person may not be able to operate their own wheelchair along those distances. The corridor and door spaces within such buildings may restrict the width of the wheelchair which can conveniently be used for transporting the challenged person. Consequently, for all of these reasons, wheelchairs operated by hand or electrically powered wheelchairs are generally not suitable for these purposes. In addition, they represent a very considerable cost per unit, and they are also difficult to store when not required.
It must also be borne in mind that in some such facilities particularly such as airport facilities, it may be desirable to move a number of challenged persons from one place to another, and then to transfer them to some other form of support. In this case, the wheelchair then becomes redundant and must be stored. In addition, ideally it should be returned to an area where it can easily be accessed for use with another challenged person.
Wheelchairs such as are used at present for these purposes are generally such that they must be returned one at a time to the location from which they were originally retrieved, and this ties up care personnel, who may have numerous other duties to perform.
In addition, in most of these facilities, the particular route to be taken for transporting the challenged person, may only be known to a care person and may not be known to the challenged person. Consequently self-propelled wheelchairs are of little use in these facilities.
Clearly it is desirable for use in these facilities to provide a wheelchair which can simply be pushed by a care person who can then move the challenged person at a good pace from one place to another.
Ideally such wheelchairs should be capable of being transported empty, in a group by a single care person so that a single care person may transport several chairs after use, from one place back to a central location.
It is also desirable to provide braking, since a challenged person sitting in such a chair has no control over the chair, and unless a care person is actually holding the chair it may roll free. A braking system which is automatic and self-operating is therefore considered essential in this type of chair.
It is also highly desirable to provide such chairs for a facility for nesting one behind the other. In this way a care person can nest a group of chairs together and then can push them as a group from one location to another.
Preferably such chairs should also provide a means for carrying a limited amount of luggage and in the case of health care institutions they should be capable of carrying patient records and like papers.